New York Stories

These three 1989 vignettes--directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola and Woody Allen--make up a bright mini-anthology of life in Manhattan: by turns, intense and stormy (Scorsese), lyrical and posh (Coppola) and wackily angst-ridden (Allen). Scorsese’s “Life Lessons,” an overpowering portrait of love on the rocks in Soho’s art scene, is the showstopper and stars Rosanna Arquette and Nick Nolte (pictured); Coppola’s “Life with Zoe” seems, by contrast, a charming piffle. But Woody gives us desert: a hilarious Freudian fantasy about the ultimate domineering mother, “Oedipus Wrecks.”